


Impersonal

by bactaqueen



Category: Captain America (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Masturbation, Off-screen Relationship(s), Other, Steve Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 17:28:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2476382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bactaqueen/pseuds/bactaqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve masturbates listening to his neighbor have sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Impersonal

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Recognizable characters belong to their respective owners. No profit is earned and no infringement is intended.
> 
> Author's Note: This is set in the ~1970s when Steve slept in that cheap motel and lived an incredibly depressing life.

The water stain on the ceiling is ugly and brown and it gets bigger every day. Even in darkness lit only by the white glow of the split-flap display of the clock radio, Steve can still see it. It grows even on days when there's no rain.

It rains a lot more than he remembers. He's not sure if that's reality or if it's just how he sees things now.

The window rattles behind the thin curtains when his neighbor shuts her door. The sound of a woman's muffled laughter comes through the wall, followed by the lower timbre of a man's voice. Steve closes his eyes. He won't admit to himself that he was waiting for this, but he was.

Most nights, he comes back to this gloomy motel room with asbestos in the walls and mold in the vents--this room that's worse than the two-room tenement he grew up in--and he showers in the tepid trickle of water from the calcified showerhead, and he collapses into this bed that stinks of the bodies that used it before him. He passes out, too exhausted to think about what he did during the day, too exhausted to think about what he'll have to do the next. He isn't sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. These days, the line between good and bad is harder to find, blurred or obscured or sometimes entirely invisible, and if no one is getting hurt, he doesn't have the time to look for it.

He tries not to think about Bucky. Bucky would tell him the lack of distinction is hurting someone--him. Steve can't afford to think like that.

It's only on nights like this, when he's tired and sore but not so exhausted he falls asleep immediately, nights like this when his neighbor--Pamela--has a guest, that he has a reason to think about what he's missing. It's only on nights like this that he thinks about the things he denies himself.

Steve knows he's hiding. He knows he's using work and the ice and the war to keep from having to join the new world and move on with his life. He still says he's too busy whenever anyone asks why he doesn't have a personal life. He can argue until he's blue in the face that his work doesn't leave him much time for a personal life, but it's all a lie.

Bucky would see through the lie. Sometimes Steve thinks he can hear his voice. _"You had plenty of time for gettin' personal in our war, Cap. Or were things with Agent Thirteen impersonal?"_

Things were different then. Peggy was different. Pamela isn't Peggy. Too tall, for one thing, but it's more than just her height or her hair or the softness in her eyes. Steve knows he's not in love with her. He doubts he could ever be in love with her, but that doesn't change how much he wants to take the guy's place next door.

He closes his eyes to listen to the creak of the bedsprings, her voice and his replies, all of it muffled through the thin wall. He can't make out the words, but he doesn't have to. The tone, the cadence, the flow of conversation punctuated by laughter or the impossibly soft sounds that must be sighs or moans--he makes do. It's been a while since he danced that dance, but he remembers all the steps.

In the near-silence that follows, Steve thinks about stripping Pamela out of her clothes. She favors smart, fashionable things: tight trousers and snug shirts and jaunty printed scarves tied at her throat. He thinks about plucking at the knot of the scarf and kissing her neck, about tugging the shirt over her head and putting his hands on her breasts, about peeling the trousers down her legs and touching her through her underwear. Once, in the laundry room, he got an ungentlemanly glimpse of her underthings, pale silk edged with lace the color of eggshell. He imagines her now, laid back on the bed, while he eases the tap pants down her legs, and when she's naked, she spreads her thighs for him.

He's half-hard and rising already, so he runs his hands over his chest. He can't pretend they're hers, no matter how light his touch; her hands are small, narrow fingers and long nails, a typist's hands. His are heavy, and broad, and always too hot. He brushes the pads of his fingers over his nipples, scratches his nails lightly in circles around the areolae, before he runs his hands down his abdomen. He trails his fingers over the contours of muscle and lower, until he presses the tips of his fingers against his hips. He waits, stroking his fingers along the waist of his boxers, until Pamela's first long, low moan. He slips his hand into the front of his boxers and wraps his hand around his stiff cock. He thinks now of being the one to get that moan from her. Eyes closed, Steve imagines settling between her legs, about sliding inside--

His hand is too dry. Frowning, he brings his hand up to lick a wet stripe over his palm and fingers. He tastes the salt of his own skin. It's not right. And when he wraps that hand back around himself, it's not enough, but it'll do.

The headboard starts pounding against the other side of the wall and Steve strokes himself in time with it. He thinks about Pamela's long legs wrapped around him, he thinks of her nails biting into his shoulders, he thinks of her mouth just as hot and wet around his tongue as her pussy around his dick. He focuses on her short, sharp cries, the ones that match each thump of the headboard, and he squeezes himself, tugs harder. He cups his balls with his free hand, hot and tight underneath. He thinks of driving into her deep and hard and making her shake around him.

He thinks of the way she might shout his name.

Steve comes, spilling over his hand and against the inside of his shorts, and he strokes himself through it, his fist tight around his dick and the other fingertips pressed up behind his sac. The tension that built leaks out of him, leaving behind an ache in his muscles and an emptiness in his chest. He lets go of himself, pulling his hands from his shorts, and as his breathing returns to normal and his heart slows--and it never takes long--he listens to their voices next door.

He doesn't know the words Pamela uses, but he gets the gist of it even through the wall.

Sighing, Steve swings his legs over the edge of the bed and makes his way through the darkness to the bathroom. He doesn't bother with the light as he peels off his sticky boxers and uses them to wipe himself clean. He doesn't need to see the evidence of what he's done. Hands clean, shorts left with the rest of his laundry in a bag on the floor near the toilet, he stumbles back to the bed. The window rattles again. This time, when Steve looks, he sees the shadow of the man pass by, backlit by the streetlamp outside.

Steve crawls under the covers.

He closes his eyes. He doesn't feel more relaxed or more alive. He feels cold and naked and alone and it's an unreasonable, irrational thing, but more than anything, he misses the war. He misses the forests of Germany and France, even in the winter. It might have been cold, Jerry might have been near, but he hadn't been alone then.

It's late. Next door, he hears the shower go on.

Steve falls asleep to thoughts of Pamela under the water.

Three hours later, he wakes up screaming Bucky's name.


End file.
